Industry committee  On broadband, it is the mission of i-Canada to work with all communities—urban and rural—to help them take advantage of broadband availability. At last week's i-Canada conference in Windsor, Ontario, we heard from a guest speaker, Suvi Lindén, who is the Minister of Communicatio

Industry committee  Commercialization expertise includes all elements or knowledge of the market and the customers, understanding what the customers need, understanding how they can be satisfied and, equally important, understanding the ways that one can reach the right customers in the process. Thi

Industry committee  First of all, there is a generic recommendation on the need for better coordination of the variety of federal programs aimed at supporting industry, especially research and development. There is a requirement for some way to structure these programs to make them more effective in

Industry committee  Another aspect is the expense and timing required for the IP to be protected. Today there is very little support for technology companies to protect their IP. There is no support from IRAP, and SR and ED does not cover that aspect of industrial evolution. That is very critical.

Industry committee  That's easier for me. Thank you. SR and ED is a very good program and is the largest program supporting innovation in Canadian industry. It is supposed to be an enabling program, and for a number of reasons the Canada Revenue Agency has been placing a lot of stumbling blocks bef

Industry committee  Absolument. There are a number of aspects described in my presentation and, again, if I have the occasion, I would like to talk at length with you and the other members of the committee about this aspect. For instance, there is a federal program called IRAP, the industrial resea

Industry committee  A lot of businesses are taking advantage of them, but they aren't all doing it. There are too many programs. At last count in Canada, there were about 470 programs to help Canadians be more innovative, of which about 50 were federal programs. The poor businessmen or business wom

Industry committee  May I answer in English?

Industry committee  Thank you very much. Let me open my presentation here quickly.

Industry committee  Thank you very much. I'm very pleased and honoured to be here on behalf of the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance, which has been leading the field for the past—

Industry committee  Thank you very much. By the way, I'm going to do just the second part of the presentation that my colleague, Barry Gander, and I have prepared on the issues related to e-commerce and commercialization. I will talk about the pan-industry study CATA led over the past year, togeth